Retailers question data showing slowdown in alcohol sales online

Data showing a slowdown in the rate of alcohol sales online compared with other sectors does not hold true, say a number of major online wine retailers.

Data showing a slowdown in the rate of alcohol sales online compared with other sectors does not hold true, say a number of major online wine retailers.

IMRG CapGemini's e-Retail Sales Index shows that although beers, wines and spirits had a fairly good first quarter, there have now been four consecutive months of single-digit year-on-year growth for the sector, including 1% in April and 0.2% in July, compared with mostly double-digit growth last year.

A spokesman for IMRG said: "To put that in perspective, in 2011 there were only two months where growth was not double digit. A possible explanation for April's low performance is it was off the back of very strong growth in April 2011 (55%), when we had the royal wedding and extra bank holidays. It would appear the Olympics did not have a similar impact in terms of consumers stocking up on alcohol."

However, leading online players say they have been performing strongly in the past few months.

Jeremy Howard, chief executive of Slurp, described the data as "perplexing". "Our own growth rate is well in advance of the IMRG figures, and we believe other online specialists, such as Naked Wines, are doing equally well. It might be that on or two of the larger bricks-and-mortar players are putting less emphasis online, and that could be distorting the index.

"But with online penetration relatively low in the overall market it seems unlikely the secular migration online is off track in any way - our numbers suggest quite the opposite. We had a net positive effect from the Olympics. Our August was actually surprisingly strong, although we did have to work hard with some price promotions to get customers to open their wallets fully."

Jay Wright, managing director of Virgin Wines, which has recently revamped its website, told Harpers sales were "really buoyant", and 5,000 new customers came on board in July. "They're up year-on-year - July in particular was a good month for us."

However, Wright admitted he didn't think the Olympics had boosted business, given its marketing restrictions. He added that the summer's bad weather had probably impacted on the sector as a whole.

Rowan Gormley, founder of Naked Wines, said his firm's sales figures were also "pretty good" in the same period.